The evaporative cooler seems to do a good job even when it’s not warm.
I think along with the AC it should keep things cool during the summer while maintaining good humidity.
A little speculation that I think to be true based on years of storage under dry conditions without humidity control……
I think it to be true that the quality of seal provided by corks is subject to some kind of distribution. Some corks provide a better seal than others and it’s variable around some average. Let’s say for example a normal distribution. The variability must be based on a number of factors such as match to neck diameter (fit), density, porosity, and possibly material composition affecting integrity over time. I also speculate that in a drier environment the distribution is shifted, i.e., at less than whatever ideal humidity is, a given cork will provide a lesser seal over time than it would under ideal conditions. The net effect I think is that the difference or variability among corks is probably greater than the difference in cork condition accounted for by humidity. This would all be consistent with my observations that some corks are in incredibly pristine condition at 20+ years despite the dry conditions.
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I found the same thing recently with one of my wine fridges. I was running it at 51 which kept the wine around 53, but felt like it was running all the time, nonstop. I moved it to 55 which keeps the wine at 55 and runs like 1/10 of the time. I find myself going in there every once in a while to make sure it didn’t break.
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As Al points out in that thread, the standard conventional wisdom (born out by plenty of community experience) is that wines age “better” (if slower) at lower temps, and ages “worse” at higher temps (at least high enough). As Al also says, from that we can conclude that the “bad reactions” are sped up relative to the good reactions as temperature increases. For that to be the case, activation energy for a bad reaction must be higher than for a good reaction. The question is, is there some temperature above which the bad reactions are accelerated enough that they start to introduce enough undesirable products, relative to the desirable results of aging. One can model a simple comparison of good and bad as a function of temperature. Here is a plot of the reaction rate constants for a lower energy and higher energy reaction as a function of temperature (I picked one value that’s more or less in the range of many average reactions, and a second at twice that number). Note that the scale of the two curves is different; the slow curve would be much smaller on the same scale as the good curve.
Notice how the “bad” reaction increases in rate much faster than the “good” reaction as temperature rises. Another way to visualize this is to plot the ratio of the rate constants. Here’s that plot, with the ratio normalized to 1.0 at a temperature of 55 degrees:
It’s readily apparent that as temperature goes up, the “bad” stuff happens in higher proportions to the “good” stuff than it does at a nominal 55. The difference between 55 and 60 isn’t that much (an increase of just 50%), but as temp increases higher and higher, that ratio of bad to good gets worse and worse. At 75 degrees, it’s a factor of about 5. At 85 degrees, it’s grown to a factor of 10.
Still doesn’t answer the question “is there some optimally good temperature to store wines long term”, but I don’t think there is an answer to that question. The cooler you store wine, the slower it will develop. Not all slow reactions are necessarily bad, they may (and probably do) contribute some of the good things we value in aged wine. There is a ton of handwaving here, this example isn’t meant to describe any particular wine, or any particular reactions, just to provide a bit of visualization of the kinetics behind aging.
Alan-
Thanks for the plots. I cycle my actively cooled room from 53F in the winter months up to 61F (for about two months in the summer) to spare my cooling unit and energy demand. Based on those curves, the difference between the ideal and 61F looks almost too small to matter much.
I have a Wine Enthusiast 166 bottle unit and I put a hygrometer in there. Seems to run higher end humidity, so when I see it’s high I simply open the door for a minute. Easy regulation and haven’t had any issues.
I agree. I wouldn’t worry at all about those kinds of swings. If I were younger, and wanted my wines to last a bit longer, I’d dial down to maybe 50. For someone a little older, who wants things to move along with just a little more pace, 60 looks good, even 65 is not so bad. For short term storage (months, even a year or two), I don’t think 70 is a problem. My own experience is that when you get into the mid/upper 70s, things start to go south for longer term storage.
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Could one debate that it would help speed the aging process by storing at room temp (72°) in a closet? If I could get a young wine to spread’em a bit sooner, seems like a good thing. Long term, not so much.
The problem is that there isn’t a single curve, as Alan suggested. Some good things and some bad things happen as temperatures rise.
For example, brett can multiply pretty quickly as you get closer to room temperature. This study concluded that, “Given the significant interactions between temperature and ethanol, wines containing >13% (v/v) ethanol should be stored at ≤12°C [~54F] to help limit spoilage by this yeast.”
But brett was less of a problem if the alcohol was above 15% or 16%, depending on the strain of brett.
Bottom line: Wine is very complex and there is no single development curve, nor are the curves necessarilly linear or continuous.
I just came on this 2018 article describing research saying humidity doesn’t matter— that the condition of the cork is a function of the high humidity in the headspace under the cork. Storing wine on its side is nonsense, says scientist - The Drinks Business
During a discussion in Portugal last week, Cabral said that the headspace of a sealed bottle of wine was so moist that there was no need to place bottles on their side to keep the cork damp.
“The cork will never dry out with almost 100% humidity in the headspace, so it is a myth that you need to store a bottle on its side,” he said.
Continuing, he said that such humidity would ensure that the cork “won’t dry out if you store the bottle upright.”
He also said that creating moist ambient conditions during wine storage was unnecessary for bottled wine (although for barrel cellars it is important to reduce evaporation).
That post should be pinned and required reading for people getting into wine collecting.
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I’m pretty happy with my temperature and humidity control now. Temperatures range between 50-55F (average 53-54F) with humidity averaging 65-70%.
So I have a place in NE Pennsylvania, that overall has high humidity. The temperature is usually around 57-62 degrees and the humidity is usually between 62 - 80% - not worried. Seems like an ideal place to cellar.
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